I am keeping your secrets
as if I wrote the legend,
crashed the planes,
abandoned the cars,
set the plaque
for Sitting Bull.
Your peeling manzanitas
are safe with me,
your rock,
your fire roads.
I have nothing to offer
except myself as I was,
gilded like a trout
downstream of your sleeping figure,
bronzed below your witch-guarded peak.
Nicole Michaels is a Marin County, CA native who makes her home in frontier Wyoming. She is a working poet with a degree in English from Stanford University where she studied under the late Diane Middlebrook and chose an emphasis in feminist studies. She spent some time in the American South as a journalist for small papers.
Top photograph by Brent Peters/Derangedtoco; Bottom photograph by Jerrye and Roy Klotz.
califragile.org 